The most helpful favourable review

The most helpful critical review

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 starsGetting better!
Installation and commissioning was easy. Only giving it 3 stars (at first - see below) for the following reasons:It is plugged into my Netgear 1000v3-Plusnet wireless router. I am disappointed with the speed of the system from my Macbook and especially my old windows XP PC. It takes at least 10 seconds for the window to come up after log-in - by comparison typing...

1.0 out of 5 starsDo not buy with bundled HDDs
This is more of a warning than a review, for reviews I would suggest looking at the DS212j on Amazon without any HDDs installed. I decided to buy the DS212j/6Tb rather than buy HDDs separately, even though it worked out slightly more expensive to do so, as I believed the HDDs would be those most suitable for use in this device.

Installation and commissioning was easy. Only giving it 3 stars (at first - see below) for the following reasons:It is plugged into my Netgear 1000v3-Plusnet wireless router. I am disappointed with the speed of the system from my Macbook and especially my old windows XP PC. It takes at least 10 seconds for the window to come up after log-in - by comparison typing 'Synology' into Google gives me a page in 2 seconds.I set up Windows file share with it so I could drag and drop directories from the PC to another Windows Explorer window for the NAS. It took many days to transfer photographs and movies from my old PC through a USB Netgear wireless dongle, and I notice I have some dropouts in some of the images, so I have to repeat the whole exercise. I also have not yet attempted to work out a way to transfer photos from iPhoto on the Mac. I also tried the Mac photo updater on some non-iPhoto images - seems to work well, but havnt tried it on a seriously large set yet.One can see from the CPU usage that it is very easy to get the diskstation's CPU to 100%, so it seems a bit underpowered.I also uploaded some music and downloaded the Logitech Squeezebox application - this was a primary reason to use the Synology since the box could be used as a music server instead of my old PC or an old Linux box. This application works very well.I also downloaded the security camera app for use with my wireless Watchbot. I tried to use the motion detection software in the NAS, but this completely locked it up and I had to reset it. So although I can use the NAS to see and record images from the Watchbot, I cannot yet make it do the motion detection application which I was hoping to do.Finally, there seems to be far too many software upgrades - a bit like Windows! - shows poor maturity in the system.I just looked at the NAS after a few days break and see there are 8 update notifications. I just hope those upgrades dont screw it up completely and destroy the RAID protection that I am relying on, otherwise I will have to go back to using Cloud storage and individual duplicated USB drives, and take the hit on speed and worries about the public nature of Google or Dropbox.Overall, the NAS is a nice piece of hardware, which I hope stays reliable, but is let down by complex and immature software.TonyUpdate 19 Dec 2014Latest updates from Synology seem to have cured the Surveillance Station motion detection problem - my Watchbot is using a fair amount of bandwidth on my wireless network, but the Synology CPU usage is low and recordings appear when motion is detected. Still learning how to fully set up this part of the software. Also, I can only pan my Watchbot from its own application, not from the Synology. But I will give it another star now.

This is more of a warning than a review, for reviews I would suggest looking at the DS212j on Amazon without any HDDs installed. I decided to buy the DS212j/6Tb rather than buy HDDs separately, even though it worked out slightly more expensive to do so, as I believed the HDDs would be those most suitable for use in this device.

As always my order was seamless and it arrived the very next day. I opened the NAS to see what HDDs were installed, and then checked them against the list of approved compatible drives on the manufactures website, and was surprised to find they were not listed. I queried this with Synology and they advised that they do not bundle HDDs with any of their products and that the HDDs would have been installed by Amazon or one of their suppliers.

So I raised an incident with Amazon, asking why drives not listed as compatible were installed in this device, and what that means in terms of support. I don't feel fully comfortable storing my data on a device with non-approved HDDs installed. I was advised that I would get a response within a week. After a week I got a reply saying it was still being looked into and I would a response within a few days. After another week passed, I was advised that my details would be passed on to the manufacturer and they would get in touch (I replied explaining again that the manufacturer doesn't bundle the HDDs). After *another* week, Amazon confirmed that they used only drives that are Synology's supported list. At this point I started to get angry and pointed out again, for the third time, that the drives were NOT on Synologys supported list. The issue was eventually escalated and someone from Amazons supply company called and within a couple of hours was able to confirm that the wrong HDDs had been installed in the device. They have offered to replace the HDDs and advised I could return the product and they would swap them out, or they could arrange for a courier to drop off new HDDs and collect the old ones. The problem is my previous NAS was failing and in the 3-4 weeks that passed I had to start using my DS212j. Yes, I should have a backup even if I'm using RAID1 setup, but I don't have this in place at the moment and so now I'm stuck with data on compatible HDDs in my DS212j. The whole experience has been very disappointing.

I cannot recommend enough buying this without HDDs installed, and buying your own HDDs separately. Go to the Synology website and in the Support section there is a list of numerous HDDs you can use.

I love this piece of kit, but you have to be a bit of a nerd to be able to use it!

First thing I wanted to do (and I guess most people want to do) is do a simple backup from my home network. It took a fair amount of research to get to the point that I could do this. Figuring out how to setup an FTP server also took a bit of research.

My only criticism is that it's a little on the pricey side for what it is.

I did loads of research on which brand to go with...Once I'd settled on Synology all I had to figure out was which model to go with (not as easy as you'd think!) as there are lots out there. Mainly went with this because of the software that comes with it. Checked a lot of reviews on Amazon and Google and it seemed that people found it hard to install this device. It is so simple. Unpack, scan instructions, plug everything in, attach to PC/Laptop and it's done. So easy to set up, took about 15 minutes. I haven't opened it up to have access to it outside my network yet and won't till security gets better for all NAS devices.One down side is the IP address changes every now and then, not an issue for most devices but sometimes the DS app on my Ipad has to be reconfigured to make a connection. Doesn't take long though.Really worth a buy. I've got almost every device in our house hooked up to our NAS and it is great to have one place to store everything.

As per other reviews, simple to setup and use. Although I'm a bit more technically minded than other members of my family and friends, I appreciate it when a product has been well designed and thought out. I wanted mine for uploadin my large CD music collection to play with Sonos (removing the need to have my PC switched on for local music). It's been a doddle to upload and the interface through a web browser is very easy. If you can use Windows Explorer you can use this.

Virtually silent in operation, smaller footprint than I originally expected. Well worth the money.

A little tricky to set up. The inital set up process failed and took my internet connection with it. Once I had restored that and found out about the need to add port forwarding things went quite well. The initial set up steps need some additional notes rather than leaving people to look on the forums for information but the actual product and DSM (Disk Management System) appear great. Very quiet and reasonable transfer speeds over a wireless link for my music set up.

It has only been at me for 6 weeks, but so far it exceeds expectations!

Use Raid 0 for it to get maximum space, and use a cloud backup to back things up just in case the disk fails.

Therefore all data is in original location (e.g. my laptop), diskstation and online.

It is truly an exceptional gadget.

My only small complaint is that VideoStation doesn't transfer information etc to XBMC unless I map the drive, in effect not use the media server, but cool to get the movies on my mobile phone through it.

As other reviewers have noted, this is a great NAS device that's almost silent in operation (unlike my Buffalo LinkStation) and really simple to set up and use. I selected the recommended Hybrid RAID (SHR) configuration, which apparently allows for one disk's worth of redundancy (if one disk fails the volume remains accessible).

The supplied pictorial 'Quick installation guide' is useless - more confusing than helpful. Fortunately, however, set-up couldn't be simpler. The unit already contained two 2TB drives, so I just plugged it in, connected to the network using the ethernet cable provided, and ran the supplied CD on one of the PCs on the network. The Web Assistant launched automatically, downloading the latest firmware and checking the HDDs. That was it.

The DiskStation then appeared as a network drive on all computers on the network (a mixture of Windows OSs). It was also available in FileBrowser on the iPad.